Medicinal Labelling Bill [HL]

Lord Turnberg Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to support my noble friend’s Bill. I believe it is timely and important. He introduced the Bill with his usual panache which I find difficult to emulate. It is a pleasure to follow my friend the noble Lord, Lord Willis. I welcome coming after him, even though he has stolen much of what I had to say. It will not stop me, of course, but I enjoyed listening to him.

I should express my interests as a medical researcher in a previous life and now as scientific adviser to the AMRC, in which organisation I work very closely with the noble Lord, Lord Willis. In the more recent past, I was chairman of NC3Rs—the National Centre for the Replacement, Reduction and Refinement of Animals in Research. All the 120 or so members of the AMRC sign up to support animal research where that is essential to improve human health and cure disease and where it is performed under strictly regulated conditions. It is worth remembering that AMRC members represent a huge variety of patient groups, from Parkinson’s disease to cancer, from Alzheimer’s disease to asthma and from diabetes to leukaemia. So a very wide section of society who suffer these diseases or care for those suffering from them recognise the value of animal research where that is essential for improvements in their care.

In chairing the NC3Rs, it has become clear that it is also important in the context of this Bill. NC3Rs was set up by the Government to support research that would lead to ways of replacing animals in research by the use of non-animal techniques, such as those that my noble friend Lord Winston described, or if that is not possible, to reduce the number of animals needed to do a piece of research and in all circumstances to refine research to minimise the suffering of animals. Chairing that body was an interesting experience since it had representatives from not only the scientific community but industry, animal welfare organisations and the Home Office animal inspectorate. Despite those different backgrounds, there was unanimity of purpose in what we did. It turned out that neither the pharmaceutical industry nor the basic scientists were at all resistant to the idea of replacing animals or reducing the numbers of animals used. In fact, the pharmaceutical industry would be relieved of the considerable expense of animal research and would be able to avoid the opprobrium that is sometimes heaped on it for doing it.

The fact is that animal research is absolutely essential in many circumstances, and although we in NC3Rs supported some excellent work that had an impact on the use of animals, as I will describe in a moment, it remains the case that research in animals is vital in the basic science, the discovery of new treatments and the testing safety of drugs before they can be given to patients. A very high proportion of all animal research is done to test the toxicity of new treatments. Huge numbers of animals are used. The industry does not like doing it. The expense and the unpleasant publicity surrounding it does not make it easy, but it has to do it because of the strict rules of the regulators. The MHRA in the UK, the EMA in Europe and the FDA in the USA would not allow a drug to be sold unless they were convinced that it was safe for human use, as demonstrated by toxicity studies in animals. We, in NC3Rs, were able to show how the number and the range of animals used in these tests could be reduced, and the industry was very happy to take those recommendations on board, but at the end of the day the regulators have to be satisfied, quite rightly, that any new drug is safe. Of course, Home Office inspectors make sure that the conditions under which animal research is carried out are strictly controlled and standards of animal care are maintained, but it has to be accepted that research in animals is essential.

In any debate on animal research there is always going to be a wide range of views from the extreme animal rights groups at one end to the scientific community at the other, but the vast majority of people somewhere in the middle will always be concerned for the welfare of animals and be unhappy if they are treated badly or inhumanely. They certainly are concerned if there are reports of animal maltreatment and want to be reassured that systems are in place to minimise suffering and that animal use is essential for the discovery and use of new cures for their ills.

I believe that labelling all drugs with a note indicating that animals have been used in their testing, as they always have been used, would go a considerable way to opening up the public’s knowledge of how drugs have to be tested for their safety and, equally importantly, point to the care and attention that is given to controlling the conditions under which such research is carried out. I cannot see that any rational person would be put off taking their medicines by such a provision.

This Bill is one step, but I hope it will open up the discussion and bring some sense and reality to a debate that is too often surrounded by misinformation.